by Carla Kelly
Owen got up before Della in the morning. With a sigh of pleasure, she moved into his warm spot. He joined Bishop Parmley on the porch as Winter Quarters came alive for another shift in the mines.
“In case you didn’t know, there was a strike here in January.”
“There was a small article in the Herald about it. A wildcat strike, wasn’t it?”
“Aye. Not much planning. All the same, change is coming to the coalfields. You think you’ll miss mining?”
“Now and then, if I’m honest. I have a lot to do in Canada, though.”
“From what you said last night, it’s sound ambitious enough for a Welshman.”
“Aye, sir. Life takes us down strange paths.”
Bishop Parmley nodded. “One step at a time makes the journey.” He clapped a hand on Owen’s shoulder. “But you know that.”
He did.
Chapter 48
L
Insist all you wish, dearest, but this little one might be a boy. Perhaps you should entertain the possibility, however remote, so you are not gravely disappointed in September.”
“I want a sister, Mam,” Anghard said. “Besides, Da knows girls.”
“He knows boys too. He is one,” Della reminded her. “Angharad, you should be a lawyer when you grow up, for you can certainly argue a case. Oh, I think the word I mean in Canada is barrister. Or is it solicitor?”
“A girl,” Angharad said firmly. She sighed. “I am a terrible traveler.”
Della laughed inside, unwilling to trample on her daughter’s innate dignity. “Lean close to me and you might feel a little tap from your brother or sister.”
“Sister. But are we almost there?”
“You are exasperating.”
“I want to see Da in just about the worst way. I need him.”
You and me, Della thought. Owen’s visit in April had been too short. He had breezed in like a breath of spring, ruffled Angharad’s hair, and then lay with his head in Della’s shrinking lap, the better to feel the activity within. His eyes had filled with tears and she called him an old softy.
When they were comfortable in bed later, he told her about the brand new and raw little town of Raymond, which was already attracting settlers, many from Utah looking for land and a better life.
“That is all Uncle Jesse ever wants,” Owen said, the wonder still in his voice, even though he knew the man better than most. “A better life for us too.”
“And now you’ve hired Saul Weisman?” she asked, drowsy but unwilling to go to sleep and waste a single sweet moment with her absentee husband.
“He should be in Raymond soon, along with Saladin. Sugar beets need analysis too, for content and moisture. He said he was glad to leave Silver City.” He kissed her throat. “Told me he’s going to make certain I treat you right and stay out of mines.” He kissed her shoulder. “Between Saul and Saladin, Eeva Koski, my newly found mother-in-law, and the ever-watchful Dr. Isgreen, I am doomed forever to toe the mark.”
“Welsh drama. Kiss me again and go to sleep.”
“Aye, miss. Still awake?”
“Barely.”
“I’ve put the men to work digging foundations and wells for the houses to come. With any luck, I’ll start on our house next month.”
Two letters later he was already apologizing for the tent it would have to be until at least August. “But there will be a wooden floor,” he added in a postscript. “Do you still like me?”
Don’t be silly; certainly I do, she remembered saying to the letter. She patted her belly and looked out the window at the District of Alberta. They had transferred to the Canadian Pacific a few hours ago at the Montana border. Angharad had stared out the window. “Are we really in Canada? It looks just like Montana,” had been her only comment before she returned to her book. No, Angharad was not a traveler.
Della absorbed the view and found herself relishing the miles of empty rolling prairie with the Canadian Rockies in a haze to the west. The distant scene, she thought. All I want is a home—canvas or otherwise—with my husband. No distant scene, thank you.
Her only regret on this journey north was that she could not have spent more time in Salt Lake between trains. As it was, she had to hurry to Auerbach’s to tell Mr. A. goodbye and try not to cry. He had sent Angharad with his secretary to the mezzanine snack bar, which gave him time to stroll with Della past his gallery of Winter Quarters art done with Franklin Rainbow Colors drawn on Magic Paper.
“It seems so long ago,” she said, remembering brave children, some scattered across the West to new mines with living fathers, or to relatives with only memories to comfort them. “So much has happened.”
He led her to the newest drawing, still on Magic Paper so it matched the others, of a tall man dressed formally in tails, with a pretty blond lady by his side, and two children standing next to her at an altar.
“My goodness, Pekka drew the wedding,” she said. “We’re all moving on, I suppose.”
“As you should.” He kissed her cheek. “Shalom, Della. Visit us when you can.”
She hurried downstairs to Menswear, with only enough time for a breathless hello and goodbye to Mr. Whalley. “Give all my love to Kristina,” she said, her eyes tearing up because the manager looking back at her had changed too. “Let us know when your baby comes.”
“And you do the same for us, Della,” he said. He leaned toward her. “You know, I wondered if I could love another man’s children. Silly me, I do.”
What could she say to that? She knew what he meant because she couldn’t imagine life without Owen’s daughter, even if the child wasn’t much of a traveler and liked to discuss things at length. Della blew a kiss to Mr. Whalley and hurried from the store.
Angharad in tow, she nearly didn’t stop at Anders, Court and Landry, half hoping Uncle Karl would be out. “I won’t be long,” she told Angharad in the lobby. “There’s a train to catch but I should do my duty.”
The secretary directed her to the boardroom, where she found her uncle surrounded by papers and from the look of concentration on his face, trying to make sense of it all. There he was, one of Salt Lake’s most successful attorneys, given a chance by his older brother’s toil of freighting and mining ore.
He raised bleak eyes to her face. He had lost weight, and looked almost frail. “I could have done so much for you,” was his greeting.
He didn’t invite her to sit down. She sat anyway, telling him of finding Antigone Wilson in Hastings, Colorado, whether he wanted to know or not.
“Owen is working in Canada, and we are on our way to join him.” She held out her hand. “I wish you well, Uncle Karl,” she said quietly.
“I don’t know why you should,” he replied, his voice barely audible.
“I’m your niece, and that’s enough reason. Goodbye and God keep you.”
Keep you far from me, she thought on the way downstairs, then felt ashamed of herself. Maybe she would write to him from the distance of Alberta District. She knew Owen would encourage her to write, but never force her.
“I am a terrible traveler too,” she told Angharad when the child woke up, glanced at more of the same prairie, and sighed. “All I want is to see Da, same as you.”
Weary of travel, Della looked out the window. Suddenly, it wasn’t the same prairie where the buffalo grass was still new after winter.
Instead, she saw fields of grain the dull gold color of late summer, when the harvest neared. The grain waved in ripples—fickle Alberta wind—and turned into an ocean of wheat that stretched for miles, at least where it wasn’t intersected with the deep green of sugar beets. As she watched in fascination, the green leaves of the sugar beet tops spread throughout the prairie and then turned back into golden grain.
Startled, she sat back, unsure of what it meant, but delighted with the view in her mind’s eye. It was most assuredly a distant scene, maybe sort of vision or epiphany that Uncle Jesse had experienced as he climbed the side of Godiva Mountain and knew tha
t if he used the wealth coming his way for helping others, he would never fail. In that moment, she knew, as surely as Uncle Jesse had known, that her wealth would be children and friends and a man with songs in his heart.
She thought of all the steps that had brought her to this precise moment in her life, a future she had never considered when she took the train to Winter Quarters almost two years ago and everything changed, most things for the better, some for the worse, but all part of the tapestry that was a life, her life. Her gratitude knew no bounds.
Buoyed up by her glimpse of the future, she looked out the window and saw the prairie of May again and the promise before her now. It was enough, and she was content.
Grumpy, hopeful, irritable, joyful, and anxious, Della held Angharad’s hand as the train entered Lethbridge and started to slow down. Della rolled her eyes when she saw a long line of coal cars on a parallel track—so much for no coal mining nearby. Was there truly an honest Welshman?
She saw the depot, but no husband. Della looked up at the flag, standing out stiff, but Owen had already warned her about the wind. Some of her exhaustion left her as she admired the brilliant red with the Union Jack in the left corner. She squinted, trying to make out the block of color toward the center. Never mind. Owen could probably tell her what it represented.
With a lump of boulder proportion in her throat, she shifted herself in the railcar and looked south, trying to glimpse one last time the land of the red, white, and blue and the Fourth of July and the Declaration of Independence. She patted the Canadian in her belly. One step enough. Her epiphany had told her she would come to love this land.
When she turned back to look out, Owen stood on the platform, Saladin leaning against his leg, both of them seeming to search the windows for their people. Owen stepped back in mock surprise when Angharad began to wave wildly. Della wondered if an expectant lady was too old to wave with an eight-year-old’s abandon. She decided to be prudent.
There’s going to be a tent with a wooden floor, Della thought as she and Angharad stood up to be the first passengers off the train. Maybe a well. The wind is going to blow forever, and I am already wondering about the winter.
Did it matter? Suddenly shy, she watched from the top step as Angharad launched herself into Owen’s arms and he hugged her. They stood close together, father and daughter who had been through rough times together, always together, but happy to share their lives with her.
Angharad knelt to pet Saladin, who waved his feathery tail in polite greeting. Owen came toward Della and held out his hands. This had become a year to remember, or maybe forget, or at least remember selectively. Sometimes all’s well that ends, she thought with a smile. Or begins.
“You’re home now, Della Davis,” her husband said as he took her hands and helped her down so carefully.
“So are you, Owen Davis. I’m here.”
Epilogue
L
September 12, 1901
Dearest Mama and Bob,
My goodness, such a time we had last week. We have a son now, and we named him Frederick Jesse Davis. Angharad is reconciling herself to a brother. She told me only this morning that he will do, since there is nothing better right now.
Fred came early, so we were still in the tent. His arrival coincided with a blizzard on September 4, which meant no doctor from Lethbridge. My husband has proved himself to be the master of many trades, apparently. He told me to breathe steadily and evenly, and he walked Angharad to Saul Weisman’s tent for something called a “frameygram.” He told her not to return without it. Saul took it from there and they searched for the frameygram until Fred squalled his way into life an hour later, delivered by his father and a neighbor lady. They never did find the frameygram. No need for Angharad to have more education at her tender years than she needs.
Poor Owen. After he cleaned up Fred and put him in my arms, he cried. When he could speak, he told me what a difference this was from Angharad’s birth, when everything went wrong. I’ve assured him several times that I feel fine, if a little sore, and happy to be up and about.
Mr. Weisman and Angharad lugged over a beet scale. Fred weighs seven pounds and ten ounces. He’s twenty inches long and has curly black hair, which pleased Owen. Fred enjoys his meals. There’s plenty to suck, so we are all content.
Owen can’t get enough of something as simple as watching Fred nurse. He is finally starting to relax and realize that he is married to a healthy woman who had a baby: no more, no less. As I watch him watching us, I begin to understand the emotions that charged Gwyna’s death and Angharad’s birth immediately after.
We’re in our house. Even two rooms (for now) and a lean-to kitchen are an improvement on the tent. More houses are going up, and soon Ray and Owen will put out a bid for contractors to begin construction of the sugar factory. There is no school yet, but after life settles down with Fred, I’ll teach Angharad and anyone else who wishes to join us.
Come soon for a visit, Mama, if you can. I think you’ll be pleased with what you see here in Raymond, our home on the prairie. I can’t imagine being anywhere else now. Owen taught us to sing “The Maple Leaf Forever” and “God Save the King.” He sings all the time. He is happy, and so am I.
Fred is tuning up, so it’s time for another grab at Mam, who feels like a Jersey cow these days. Owen often lies down with us and reads aloud from Pickwick. Saladin divides his time between Saul’s tent and our front step, where he guards us from all intruders. Angharad and the other little girls play with her dollhouse.
Mama, this is my life now. I want no other.
Your daughter,
Della Olympia
Afterword
L
As a writer of historical fiction, I enjoy rubbing shoulders with history’s intriguing characters, some well-known, some not.
I’m often asked which people in My Loving Vigil Keeping, and now One Step Enough, actually lived. The answer is many. In fact, I’ve never used so many real people in works of fiction as in these two books.
One way to make historical fiction come to life is to write the real people alongside fictional ones. Richard Woodman, author of the Napoleonic Era nautical series featuring Nathaniel Drinkwater, wrote:
“This [series] sprang from my desire to truly reflect the reality of the sea-life of the period and not some romanticized version of it, but also from a strong urge to insert my imaginary naval protagonist into the very fabric of recorded history. That is what I believe an historical novel should attempt.”
I agree. When I place my fictional characters (Della and Owen) next to actual people (Thomas Parmley, Jesse Knight, and Richard Evans) the reader more easily makes the leap to considering the fictional characters real.
The real people mean as much to me as my fictional creations, if not more. I have tried mightily to “use” them appropriately and accurately. I made some errors, and these errors are mine. Sometimes I have left out details from their actual lives, simply because the details couldn’t further the story. The writer of historical fiction must be ever-mindful that as fascinating as history is, the story comes first. It must.
Not surprisingly, it was after the publication of My Loving Vigil Keeping that I began to hear from descendants of some of these real people. To a person, they have been both appreciative and supportive of my efforts to “borrow” their relatives. They also politely set me straight when I went far afield.
The difficulty in finding out more at the time of writing Vigil lay in the reality that most of the wives who became widows remarried and took other last names. Since they were mainly peripheral characters, I couldn’t spend hours of research time finding them. For the most part, I was accurate, but not always.
In this vein, let me share a little with you about the real people in this book I came to appreciate and—I don’t mind admitting it—to love. Novelists roll that way.
Thomas Jennison Parmley (1855–1947)
Affectionately known as Uncle TJ among his descendant
s, Thomas Parmley was the son of a coal miner. Born in Durham, England, in 1855, he went into the mines at the age of ten. His father had died when TJ was six, and his mother remarried George Watson.
At some point, the family listened to missionaries from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and joined the Church. TJ remained in Durham until the age of twenty-six, when he came to the United States, going first to coal mines in Iowa and eventually to Utah. In 1882, he became mine superintendent in Winter Quarters Canyon, located quite close to Scofield, Utah, in Carbon County.
Following his 1885 marriage to Mary Ann Carrick, an English convert like him, TJ also became the bishop of the Pleasant Valley Ward, located in Winter Quarters Canyon. He remained both bishop and superintendent until Mary Ann’s death in 1919. The Parmleys were the parents of seven children, three of whom died young and were buried in the family plot in Scofield Cemetery with Mary Ann. You can find them there as I did.
Well-known in mining circles, TJ Parmley remained an influence in Utah coal mines all his life. In 1922, he married Mary Margaret Whiting. He died in Provo, Utah, in 1947 at the age of ninety-one, and is buried in Salt Lake City.
Jesse Knight (1845–1921)
Jesse Knight was born September 6, 1845, in Nauvoo, Illinois, the sixth child of Newel K. Knight and Lydia Goldthwaite Knight, two of the LDS Church’s early stalwarts.
His first memories centered around hardship and persecution of the Saints, who were forced from New York, to Missouri, to Illinois and assembled in Winter Quarters, Nebraska, preparatory to moving west. Sadly, Newel Knight died there before he could make the journey. Lydia and her children eventually arrived in Utah Territory in 1850.
Jesse’s was a childhood of poverty. He made the trek west as a six-year-old, walking mainly and gathering dried buffalo chips for firewood. In Utah, he recalled digging pigweed and sego lily roots to help feed the family. By the age of eleven, he hauled firewood with a team of oxen.
Marrying Amanda McEwan in 1869, Jesse did a little bit of everything to support his own family. His faith waned for a time, but a series of health crises among his children reminded Jesse of earlier promises he had made to the Lord. Jesse’s life changed forever after that, as he accepted what he called his “stewardship to the Lord.”
